Summits on the air (SOTA) CW activation 

Glad you liked the videos, I appreciate the feedback. Portable radio is very relaxing and enjoyable, 73

Thanks for watching and the thumbs up, 73

Congratulations on passing your exams, hope you get on the air and operate CW soon. I am glad the videos helped with your practice. I am not sure of the brand of the brass iambic paddle, I bought it off eBay a few years ago and it isn’t labelled, 73

Thank you David. I must admit that it takes me several throws to get the arborist line into the tree properly. I usually try for maximum height at the expense of accuracy. Good luck with your POTA activation tomorrow. Hopefully we can make a P2P contact one day, 73

Thanks Matt, the IC-705 is a great radio. The band conditions were tough with QSB so a little more power would have helped, 73

Hi Matt, the suffix /p means operating portable. Not all activators use /p when activating a park since it can be inferred that they are portable, 73

Hi Albert, “ee” (i.e. dit dit) is often used as the final sign off at the end of a CW QSO. I believe that CW transmissions were historically completed to the tune of “shave and a hair cut, two bits”, i.e. the first operator would send “dah di di dah dit” and the second operator would then send “dit dit”. Now only “dit dit” is used. There is a Wikipedia article on “shave and a hair cut, two bits” that provides some more background, hope this helps, 73

@@vk2ter thank you for the reply de dv3zca philippines

Thanks Dennis, it was a great day for portable radio, a few clouds but no rain. The band conditions were tough with QSB but I got enough contacts to activate the summit, 73

Yes it is a noisey cw key. The clicks are more noticeable from the “dah” / right paddle. It is a really nice key to use but it weighs about 1.8kg so is more suited to the shack rather than portable operations, 73